The Cover
Fail fast and home grow your talent
The management strategies behind the success at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. What can universities learn from one of the world’s most successful labs?
By Claudia Civinini
"They are almost contrary to how we usually do science."
"In the LMB, they want to promote internally."
"The goal has always been to be internationally reputable and align with other global universities."
The Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in the UK is a proper Nobel Prize magnet – or factory, as it’s been frequently nicknamed.
In a bid to find out what management practices are conducive to excellence and innovation, Dr Luka Gebel, together with co-authors Dr Chander Velu and Dr Antonio Vidal-Puig, embarked on a deep analysis of the lab’s inner workings.
They conducted interviews with senior LMB and external scientists and analysed 60 years’ worth of documents from the lab, including meeting minutes.
A recipe for success is hard to define. However, as it often happens with the recipe of traditional dishes, it’s bound to have unexpected ingredients.
A number of findings, Dr Gebel tells QS Insights Magazine, were surprising. “They are almost contrary to how we usually do science,” he explains.
The first of these findings is that teams at the LMB are restricted to a maximum of five people. While bigger teams are commonly preferred in order to pool and share knowledge, the LMB has gone in the other direction.
“It’s a way to sustain failure very rapidly and take into account the inherent unpredictability of basic science,” Dr Gebel explains.
The agility to change course and adapt fast is something inherent to the culture at LMB, he adds: “It’s a culture that’s all about changing very rapidly and looking strategically at how technology changes and what that means for the scientific field, and therefore how they need to adapt. This also builds people that always look out for that.”
Internal promotion and homegrown talent foster the LMB’s specific research culture, which is another feature that sets the laboratory apart.
“Usually, when you do your PhD in one institution, most universities have an explicit policy that you are not allowed to start your professorship or your postdoc there because of what they call knowledge inbreeding,” Dr Gebel comments.
“But in the LMB, they want to promote internally. And that is because they actually see it’s very hard for them to get people from outside to adapt to the research culture the LMB has.”
Success metrics are perhaps the most striking element that sets the laboratory apart from the rest of the sector.
“If you look at any university – if you look into how I got my job, or how we promote in universities, it’s all about journals. It’s all about where you publish. Universities like to say you have all the autonomy to do whatever you want, but you need to publish or otherwise there is no future,” Dr Gebel comments.
“The LMB has this very scientifically pure conception of that – the publication is the by-product of good science. And they figured out a way to reward the good science as opposed to the publication.”
One of the recommendations from the findings, according to Dr Gebel and co-authors, is to prioritise long-term scientific goals.
However, broad changes would need to happen for the same approach to be implemented in the sector. Prioritising long-term scientific goals may be a particularly difficult point to generalise, Dr Gebel observes.
“It is curious to zoom out and see what would have to change in the broader system,” he explains.
“A lot of it has to do with how we fund science, because that’s where the incentive systems come in. The LMB is very unique because they have the luxury of having very stable funding from one funding body. And so they don’t have to fight for funding like the universities through the Research Excellence Framework, and also they only have one funding body to answer to in terms of what research they are doing.”
But there are some generalisable lessons, he says. A clear strategy is the first step.
“It all starts with defining what my goal as an institution is. This is a problem most universities face as they haven’t actually defined what their goal is.
“For example, the goal has always been to be internationally reputable and align with other global universities. The ranking comes a lot from the research – and so that's why then the incentive system is all about publication count. But that has actually very little to do with how good the teaching is.”
Another generalisable lesson is perhaps daring to be different, adopting policies that benefit the specific institution’s context even if they go against the grain.
“Not all universities are the same, nor they should be, so maybe one lesson is not to just go with the policy that everyone else puts in place,” Dr Gebel explains.
“Think about internal promotion. Try to think about what your goal as an organisation is. How are you different? Might internal promotion produce a better outcome for your organisation?”
